The Bakers Dozen 13 hour Mt. bike race Leesburg VA

I was running late, the race started on Sat. April 21st 11am, and I planned to be there at 9am, but didn't get there until 10am. This was fine cause Jay had brought his RV Friday, and Steve had gotten our timing Chip setup some stuff on Friday night(you can do this when the race is 10minutes from your teammate). I got there and the venue was laid out great. I had pre-ridden the course, and it was about the same, just a different entrance into the woods and the big field was split in two. So it is decided I am to start the race and do the first lap.
I usually don't like to do the first lap, cause I have a tendency to go out too fast. So we start there was a good turnout maybe like 200 people. I started kinda in the middle, which in hind site I should have gone more to the front. So we start and I am next to Sid and we are in the field, I start putting on the gas and I get in the top 20 going into the woods. I start passing people, and end up behind Kent, my fellow DCMTB\CityBikes teammate. I road behind him, and then I got in front of Kent, and I was hoping that would could team up and ride together. I should of stayed with Kent, but I burned some matches and ended up being the 5th? rider done with the first lap.
Steve, is more consistent in his lap times. So his lap times are usually the same as mine overall. We did our laps and somewhere after 2 or 3 laps I wasn't feeling too good. The Sun was out and it was close to 80. I think I was dehydrated and needed some protein or something. Then I started noticing my shock was leaking! The shock was still working just not as well as it could have. At one point we were in 2nd place around lap 6 or so. Then I had some slower lap times, and I remember the riders passing me, and thinking-I think those are the guys in my class! I wasn't feeling it, my body was blah, but my legs could still move fine, that is until I started getting cramps in my quads one lap. So around late afternoon/evening I had some regular food, I ended up eating like 4 chicken breast sandwiches with salt on them and a hard boiled egg with salt. On my next lap I started to feel more like myself. I was tired, but I wasn't having tunnel vision anymore. At some point we were down to 4th and that was where we would end up, we just needed to put in some solid final laps. I was going to do my last lap(it was now really cold, I was wearing all my fall/winter stuff) I told Steve to look at the times, and if the other team was not going to get in before 12am then he wouldn't need to do another lap(this race you could finish whenever you wanted you did not need to be on the race course at the end). Well on my last lap, most racers had decided to call it a day so there, wasn't many people out there. I had a great time on my last lap, no one in the woods and my head light was on tight(the lap before it was loose and going all over the place, making it hard to see). I passed Jay so that meant we lapped his "Darren and Steve are going Down" team! I busted my tail, and beat my previous lap by 4 minutes. I get back and Steve in not suited up, he said we were ahead. Well we looked at the sheets, and we were ahead but by 7 minutes. So we got 5th but in our hearts we got 4th. I would have cared more if it was a 3rd to 4th, but hey I finally felt better after being in a not so good place during the day. I felt so good I ended up hanging out with Kent and his teammate Pat, at the bonfire drinking some brews until 2:30am. After that sweet sleep in Jay's RV, I woke at 6:30 quickly packed and was gone by 7am.